An Inside Look at an Anxiety Attack

Has anyone ever bullied you? Have you have got into a fight before? Has anyone ever hurt your feelings? Sure you have. It really sucks and it hurts a lot. But, how we deal with it is where you and I become different.

Dealing with situations like those puts my anxiety on ‘high alert’. (If you want to know more about my anxiety, read here.) I try talking to my mom and my sister about how I feel and what is going on. They are hurt that I feel this way, but tell me to quit playing the victim and go on with life.

That’s where my anxiety kicks in. It’s not that simple. I play tough on the outside, but inside I’m a coward. I’m falling to pieces, I can’t sleep, I over think every situation, and I cry when no one is looking. I try to hide my feelings from the Farmer because this is very hard for him to understand. It’s hard for everyone to understand. They don’t realize that I can’t simply ‘forget’ about what has been done to me. They don’t understand why ‘tough’ Kellie isn’t showing through and why she isn’t flipping those people the bird?

You see, I’m really good at playing tough. Real good. (Read more about it here.) So good that most of my friends think that I’m the bad a** of the group. The one that will always stand up to others and never lets anyone bring me down. Well. Some of that’s true. I don’t let anyone hurt my friends and I will stand up for them ’til the death. I just can’t do it for myself.

Things that go through my head are, “Is God trying to point something out to me? Is He trying to tell me to get out of here? Is He trying to tell me that I’m better off elsewhere? Why does this person hate me? What could I have possibly done soooo bad that they would do all these mean things to me? What can I do to make them like me? What can I do to make them hate me less? Why won’t they confront me about the problem? Who are they telling all these lies too? Does that person know what she said? Does that person judge me? Does that person think the same thing? Does that person think I’m an awful person too? I better talk to that person and make sure they know I’m not as bad as they say. I better tell me them everything though so they get both sides of the story. Oh my gosh, I better ask them if they like me. I better get approval. Oh my gosh, I just told them everything and now they probably think I’m a freak. I better go apologize. What about if they think that’s weird? Holy cow I’m making this worse. How many people know about this? How many people is that person going to tell? What if they think I’m dumb?”

Then I go through an angry stage, “This wouldn’t have to happen if this person would just talk to me. This wouldn’t be this way if they would be a grown-up and talk to me. This is so childish and immature. Why am I even dealing with this? Why wouldn’t they like me? I never did anything to them. WHY CAN’T I STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS? WHY CAN’T I LET THIS GO???” That stage doesn’t last very long because then I go back into panic mode.

“Who have they all told this too? Oh my gosh they’re talking to someone and they just looked at me. I bet you they are judging me right now. They probably hate me right now too. I better look away. I’m just going to sit down and not say anything. I’m just going to breathe and think about how I’m going to get out of this situation.”

Well once I start thinking about how I’m going to get out of the situation, the results are extreme. It’s packing up my bags and moving somewhere where no one can find me. It’s going to a friend’s house and hiding out for a few days. It’s avoiding every activity that those people could even possibly be. When I was younger, the solutions were a lot worse. Thankfully I’ve quit thinking that drastically, but every solution involves me completely redoing my entire life so I don’t have to be faced with them ever again and have to have these thoughts run through my head. You will never know when I’m thinking this way. I can be sitting in church or at the dinner table. The Farmer has figured me out though. He knows when I’m sad, when I’m overthinking, and when I’m about ready to lose my sh^t.

As I’m writing this, it’s 12:07 in the morning. I haven’t been able to sleep or stop thinking about a certain situation. I’m literally having an anxiety attack as I write this, but being able to spill everything out onto this blog is helping me relax. A little. All those thoughts that I wrote above…I wrote those as I was thinking. Those thoughts happen in that order.

As my mom used to say, “Kellie, they aren’t as worried about this as you are. They aren’t as upset about this as you. Why are you letting yourself get so worked up?” And as I always told her, “Mom, I just can’t help it. It bothers me. It’s constantly running through my head.” As I got older, my mom started to understand my problems and helps me try to deal with them.

One good tip my mom has learned is to not tell someone with anxiety to just ‘get over it’. You see, we can’t. We simply do not just GET OVER IT. We tread on it. We burro ourselves in its’ misery. We don’t enjoy the pain. We don’t like to feel this way. Not only does our brain hurt, but so does our heart. Our body aches from the stress. Tears flow down our faces from pain we can’t physically feel.

All over the fact that someone doesn’t like me for some idiotic reason. For something that I shouldn’t care about. For something I can’t control. And, obviously, not everyone is going to like each other.

That’s where anxiety is so damn confusing. I understand all of those things. I just can’t get a grasp of it when I’m being ‘attacked’.

I hate playing the victim. I don’t mean to play the victim. In reality, I just want to make that other person happy. I don’t want them to hate me because of something I did. I feel bad and want to make things better. I’m not crying because they hurt my feelings, but because I have no idea what I did and I want to know how to make things right. And I don’t understand how people can say such means things when they haven’t had a conversation with me before. Don’t hate me because you think I have something in life better than you, for goodness sakes, if you can’t tell by this blog, I’m a complete mess.

And as I write this blog, I keep talking. I keep rambling. That’s another thing people with anxiety do when they are upset. They can’t stop talking about whatever is bothering them. So since I’ve come to realize that I’ve been writing and writing and writing, I’m going to end this very personal blog.

I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed holiday season. Remember in life who loves you, who cherishes you, and who makes YOU happy. Some days it’s a struggle, but that’s why God has blessed you with other wonderful things in your life. I thank God daily for my wonderful parents, my biggest fans (my nieces), my outstanding sister who always knows what to say to lift me up, and my fiance for learning more about anxiety and always willing to help me through every attack. Oh and Otis and my cows. What would I do without them?